Evgeny Lebedev decides not to take Mandrake up on a bet

Evgeny Lebedev, the son of the owner of The Independent, appears reluctant to
bet on the future of the newspaper.

Evgeny Lebedev dPhoto: BLOOMBERG

By Tim Walker

7:15AM BST 26 Aug 2013

Given that The Independent is free of proprietorial interference, it was jolly decent of its picture editor to find space over the weekend for a carefully posed portrait of Evgeny Lebedev dressed as a matador.

It was used to illustrate an article that the 33-year-old son of the newspaper’s owner, Alexander, had written about bullfighting. It did not, alas, appear to be a subject that he had altogether mastered. He wrote that a bull fight takes place in a “stadium”. No, it takes place in a bull ring

He also described bullfighting as a “sport”. Another howler: it is not a sport as the bull always loses. In Spain, bull fights are reported in the arts, not the sports, pages.

The piece was run beneath the headline: “Will bullfighting survive in modern Spain?” I have bet the fledgling journalist £1,000 that bullfighting will continue in Spain after The Indepenent had ceased to appear on the newsstands. He has still to take me up on it.

Related Articles

I have seen other journalists with my name come and go over the years, but Camilla Rutherford looks as if she may have to grin and bear it with a French actress named Camille Rutherford.

Camilla, the star of The Darjeeling Limited and Gosford Park, is sanguine about her near namesake, but don’t confuse their reviews. Daily Variety said Camille delivered a “shallow performance” in Mary Queen of Scots, which “hamstrung” the film. Others felt she “struggled” with the English language.